A city of Denver panel ruled Monday that El Diablo Restaurant and Sketch Food & Wine at First Avenue and Broadway can reopen Tuesday pending resolution of a dispute over building safety measures.

The Board of Appeals, a unit of Denver Community Planning and Development, ruled in an emergency hearing that it will lift its forced closure of the restaurants until Oct. 1. By that date, the restaurants’ owner, Jesse Morreale, must obtain all permits to comply with the city’s work plan.

City inspectors had closed the establishments July 10. Notices posted said, “Continued occupancy of this structure poses an immediate hazard to the life safety of occupants and the public.”

Morreale disputed the action, saying he had complied with city directives.

The closure left 137 employees out of work. Morreale said Monday that he is launching a fundraiser with proceeds going to the employees.

El Diablo was one of two Jesse Morreale-owned restaurants closed by the city of Denver.

The adage notwithstanding, you CAN fight city hall. It’s merely that in the process, you’ll often be whacked upside the head.

Just ask Jesse Morreale, the Denver restaurateur whose popular spots on Broadway – El Diablo and Sketch – were shut down by city inspectors on Wednesday after a lawyer-filled dustup with the city over construction-code issues that Morreale said he can’t pin down, the lawyers notwithstanding.

“It’s bad, dude,” Morreale, who runs M Inc., said in a Thursday afternoon (July 12) phone interview. “They’re closed, and I have no idea why, and I don’t know when they’ll reopen. It’s terrifying. We’ve asked the city for the specifics but they keep changing.”

The city’s bottom-line beef seems to involve questions of construction without proper permits, but Morreale disputes that. “The fact is we’ve been working with the city for four years,” he said. “We completed all the work before we opened El Diablo two years ago and we documented it.”

The imbroglio went public this week when, as Westword newsweekly noted, the city slapped “Danger” notices on the restaurants’ doors that made it sound as if the whole shebang was teetering on the edge of collapse:

“Continued occupancy of this structure poses an immediate hazard to the life safety of occupants and the public,” the notices read. “Per 2011 Denver Building Code (CBC) Sections 104 and 105, the referenced site is immediately vacated. Failure to immediately vacate shall result in further City action.”

Gee Dude- in thinking of your employees welfare you should have thought about proper permitting and inspections BEFORE opening. As a long time owner of several Denver metro businesses I can tell you that the city inspectors don’t show up for the heck of it nor do they keep the reasons why a big “secret”. They are just there to do their job which is enforcing city ordinances.

Its usually arrogance in blowing the inspectors off or not showing them what they’ve asked for that causes this to happen. If I were this guys neighboring business owner I’d be grateful as heck the city shut him down so that my business doesn’t burn down because he didn’t follow building codes.

Nice, balanced piece. It was especially good to hear from the head of the city’s Building Department, and from the inspectors.
Wait, you say that the City was not asked to comment? All right, then. I’ll just take the bartender’s word for it, then.

I live in Boulder, so i have never been here, but from what i read from the comments, it sounds like they have a problem with sanitation, and cleanliness. It doesn’t mean that their bad, it just means that they should step up there game, if they want to stay in business.

I am not convinced the Denver city inspectors do much. I live in a loft downtown and we had to redo all of the building pipes 8 years after it was finished since they were leaking at the joints. The company that redid them said it should never have passed an inspection since they weren’t done to code.

Oh yeah, I went to check out Diablo twice…first time was opening week, and it was terrible (food and service). I tried once more to see if things got better…IT WAS ACTUALLY WORSE. Sorry Jesse, you need to try something different that does not include food/bev or entertainment. Your places just plain SUCK!

You cant open without a certificate of occupancy. You cant get one of those without an inspection and approval for the work done from the city. This has nothing to do with the quality of the food served or the service. El Diablo opened months behind schedule due to holdups and changes made by the building department to satisfy occupancy and the whole ordeal was well documented by the press. The fact that the city has the audacity to close the doors of a functioning business in a building which has been standing for a hundred plus years and was proven to be structurally sound less than 5 years ago is insanity, again, regardless of the food.

Even if there had been work done to other parts of the building either with or without permits, those spaces could not be occupied without their own separate certificates of occupancy. I fail to see how that has anything to do with the businesses operating on the ground level, not to mention, there are other businesses operating which Jesse Morreale does not own in that building which were not shut down. Thus showing contept on the Citys behalf.

So, unless you are ok with the city randomly closing functioning operating businesses for code violation. The same code it was built to and passed, and the same code which most of the restaurants in Colorado were grandfathered into and don’t meet either, shut up about the quality of service and let the city know thats not ok.

Wow, negative, negative negative. Reading comments sections always makes me pessimistic about our society today. No doubt, there is more to the story than is presented in this story. But wow, people, so vitriolic! For the record, I go to El Diablo quite a bit, and have never had a bad experience. All the haters can go somewhere else, just makes it that much easier for me to go in and find a table. I hope Morales and the city get things figured out, it definitely sucks that the employees are caught in the middle of this, whatever the truth is.

http://www.ccdconline.org/01-13-2011/el-diablo-restaurant, mystery solved? Why is this guy acting like he has no idea why his business closed? The information is just a google away. Looks like the trouble stArted over a year ago. How easy would it have been to just change the steps to ramps?